stagnant towns
by edeabeth
Summary: "Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality." University AU


I wrote my last ATLA story only for the sake that I wanted to write something tragic and depressing, without being really depressing or tragic. A commenter however had mentioned that they'd really liked it, and so I guess this is for you, spycaptain.

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Stagnant Towns

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_fall_

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He finds her one night in the campus library tucked away somewhere in the back and surrounded by old books. She has her pale legs tossed over the arm of the overstuffed chair she'd claimed already and has her head tilted back laughing.

She looks raw and open, and it takes him a few seconds to walk away from the perfect stranger and return to his dorm room alone.

He imagines her still there at one in the morning, lips glossy in dark ink and finger tips sliced raw from paper cuts.

.

He can't stop thinking about her.

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He spends three days searching the University for the girl. He haunts the library day and night forever searching but she's never there.

Katara gleefully tells him that she thinks it's perfectly adorable, and Zuko doesn't really care because Zuko never really cares and that's maybe the only thing Sokka likes about the guy.

Aang does, because he's the most perfect roommate ever.

Aang makes dozens of rough sketches based on the even rougher details Sokka can manage to give him, pinning them up to the massive cork board Aang has above his desk. Sokka gazes at blurred outlines of sharp eyes, a quirk of a smile or a glimmer of a smirk. Those sketches look like ghosts, phantoms tacked up by silver pins.

Sokka wanders the academic buildings in pursuit of the nameless figure until he finally finds her walking through the halls, clutching an oversized binder to her chest.

He wants to call her name but can't because he doesn't even _know_ what her name is.

So he follows her into the massive lecture hall and takes the seat beside her, so painfully aware that he is sitting down next to her. He is so close he can hear the low burst of loud music from her ear buds she's flung around her neck, and he can smell something like jasmine in the rain.

"I'm Sokka," he tells her quietly as she glances at him quickly.

"Toph."

Sokka looks around them at the room and then realizes he is already ten minutes late for his Canadian History discussion group.

.

(He never went to his discussion group.)

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Sokka shut the door loudly behind him, feeling all sorts of giddiness and sheer enthusiasm. Aang's sitting cross legged on his bed, various sketches in various stages scattered around him. "Did you find her yet?" he mumbled around a mouthful of pens and pencils.

"Yeah."

"Was it worth it?"

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"Hey. So I've never seen you in my lecture hall before." She crosses her arms and looks hard at him.

Sokka feels so suddenly awkward and clumsy.

"I'm not an English Major." He paused for a second. "I'm studying history." He admits, looking at everything but her face.

There's a lapse of silence between them. "I'm dating someone right now."

.

His heart twists painfully in his chest, but he can't let go of clinging to her shadow because it is the closest he will ever get to her, it seems.

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_winter_

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He met her outside the library as she dragged the toe of her right boot across the frozen ground. "You're late." She informed him quietly with her head bowed. She had flakes of snow still caught in her dark hair. Toph nearly dropped her bag, fumbling to keep a copy of Dickens from hitting the ground while slipping her gloves on.

"Sorry. How was class?"

She met his gaze through dark lenses as she adjusted her dark sunglasses, "Would you believe I just sat through a ninety minute lecture on Sylvia Plath without a single quote of Sylvia Plath?"

Sokka snorted. "I just got taught about the civil war of America in my Asian History course."

"That is so messed."

He pauses, looking at her pale face and cat eyed sunglasses. "You do realize that the sun isn't out, right?"

"I've caught on."

They slowly walked to the coffee shops she worked at on Tuesdays and Thursdays, ducking under the golden signs with dark green letters spelling out the _Jasmine Dragon_. She flinches away as he brushed his hand against her narrow shoulder blades, and they immerse themselves within the dull roar of voices rising and tangling in the cold air.

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"So why did you come here?" She asks him as she scribbles down strings of Chinese characters into her notebook.

Sokka is sprawled out over her narrow bed, flipping idly through the yellowing pages of _My Antonia_. He looks up at her, perched by her desk. Her surface is covered with old notes and tubes of foundation, and a box of band aids. "Because you asked me to come over."

She snorts as she kicks her legs up onto her bed. "I mean here. Roku University."

For a second he remembers the way his mother's coffin was lowered into the ground and how the rain turned the soft Earth into a thick sludge of mud. How the skies roared and the weariness of his father's hooded eyes.

He looks at her, her dark eyes meeting his. "I was sick of stagnant places. I wanted to get away from my town as fast as I could."

Something flashes across her pale face. "Funny. I wanted to get away from my family as far as I could."

.

Her eyes always look sad now, as if someone had ripped her heart out and smashed it the way porcelain dolls break.

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"I hate that guy." Zuko frowns at the tall figure from across the café.

Sokka looks up from his coffee. "Who's he?"

Zuko splits a single name from his clenched teeth. "Zhao."

Zuko had never been prone to get emotional about anyone but Mai and that's the only reason why Sokka takes interest in this massive figure that towers over the surrounding people.

Zuko gives him a slow look, his good eye meeting his eyes. "He's Toph's boyfriend."

.

Yue grins at him from her desk, sitting with her back straight. "I thought you would skip today. You're cutting it close."

"And miss a lesson of revolution with massive kill counts?" He flings himself next to her as he fumbles around for his laptop and textbook. "So what are you doing after class?"

Yue has a sharp grin, beckoning him closer. "You're taking me out for lunch. You just don't know it yet."

Professor Piandao swings the door shut behind him loudly, and the room falls silent.

He thinks of Toph swallowed by Zhao's shadow and forces himself to grin back. "What are you hungry for?"

.

November is a cold month that makes him feel grey inside.

Yue haunts his mornings, her smile bright like the night sky, and Toph clings to his nights with her eyes as vibrant as morning sunrises.

He tries to think past Toph, but all he can really think about is November was the month his mother was shot and buried; and how Toph doesn't really eat anymore and how his world feels like it's dissolving into dust.

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Yue's kisses are numbing.

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He tries to avoid her now.

Sokka hates the way his heart jumps at the sight of Toph, and how he is so much more aware around her. He hates it, because he should feel this way about _Yue_.

Except he doesn't.

So that is why he avoids the library and ignores the Republic Dormitory, not even daring to look up at her open window when he passes by.

.

"Do you want to get coffee or something?" June demands the moment Sokka enters the lounge. She looks strange, the reclusive business student up in his face with her hands clenched at her sides. Katara's hovering over June's shoulder, his lips pressed tightly together.

He remembers her face the day their father told them that their mother was shot. He remembers how Katara had refused to cry at the funeral, but how she broke down three days later.

His heart stops.

"What happened?"

June fades away, stepping backwards. She looks razor sharp into the shadows of the lounge and Katara looks oddly softer in the light. "It's Yue, Sokka."

He swallows. "Yeah. What about her?"

Katara tries to take Sokka's numb hands but he pushes her away. "She was in a car accident. She's dead."

Her words slam into his chest like railroad spikes and he feels so fucking empty inside. He almost wants to laugh, because he had seen her last night. She'd driven him back to the dorms before taking off for her father's place, in her bright blue convertible. She had waved at him as she left the parking lot, turning up the radio so all he could hear was the bright tune of some cliché pop song.

Sokka had stood there, watching the little blue convertible disappear before finally walking away and into the dormitories.

What that bright blue convertible must look like now, twisted and marred by blood and broken glass.

.

She left him a book.

It's something Toph would leave him; mumbling under her breath that he never read anything beyond his history textbooks and how many revolts could he possibly want to read before revolting himself?

It's the complete works of Emily Dickenson, dog eared and as delicate as Toph's copy of _20,000 Leagues Beneath the Sea_.

Yue's roommate had had slipped him the book after the funeral. Sokka's name had been printed on the inside cover in her usual lacy script, with a single message written in blue ink.

_I love you._

He only had her for the grand total of almost two weeks and what hurt him most was that single realization that he'd never really loved her back, that he never had the chance to fall in love with her and maybe he should have.

Maybe he could have.

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_Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality._

.

"Sorry about your girlfriend." Toph tells Sokka quietly after hours of studying side by side, bumping her knee against his. "Zuko told me."

He feels like his chest is made out of ice. "She wasn't my girlfriend."

She doesn't look phased by his words, but meets his gaze coolly. There's something off about her face, as if one eye was slightly swollen or something. He gets up from their table and walks away, leaving her in his shadow for the first time.

.

Sokka waits for Zuko at a table inside Roku's Nations Café, looking up idly at a banner with four brightly painted circles. Blue, green, red and orange. The green looks so vibrant that it hurts his eyes and he has to look away.

"Are you not talking to Toph now? I thought you had an obsession over her." Zuko's impassive voice makes him jump in his seat, and the impassive figure slowly slides into the chair across from him.

"Not really." He shrugs, accepting that cup from Zuko and handing him a few coins.

"Can I ask why?"

"Can I ask why you won't go anywhere near Mai then?" He shoots back, tugging at his kept hair. "I don't really want to talk about Toph."

It's been three weeks since that day in the library when he left her behind at the library, and of course she walks in through the door, Zhao following tightly behind her.

He averts his eyes, because he still can't stop thinking about her. Some nights he dreams of her blended into Yue, to the point where he can't see past the dead girl and the living girl.

Toph seats herself across the busy room, fiddling with the buttons of her green jacket. She looks almost like a china doll next to Zhao's hulking form. The massive figure looks across the room and glares coldly at the Zuko.

"How old is he?"

Zuko doesn't look at Sokka, but locks eyes with the menacing figure opposing them. "He's in his fourth year. Doing a major in biology."

"He does look like the sort of guy to start to play around with biological warfare."

Zuko exhales something that sounds almost like a whisper of a laugh. "June thinks he might be hitting Toph. She came across them arguing after class, and apparently he was getting pretty rough."

Sokka looks over at the girl and remembers that one night in the library where she was no more than a stranger, lost in a world created from the printed word. "She's tough."

.

If this were one of Katara's trashy romance novels, Sokka would have landed a blow on Zhao and would have already swept Toph up in his arms.

But he isn't the hero, and has no real desire to be a hero.

He and Zuko leave the Nations Café in silence, head bowed to the sharp wind. He'd like to imagine that Toph would have watched him leave, her eyes tracing his departing form. Maybe she would have called his name, swallowed by the low dull roar of the other occupants.

His phone buzzes in his pocket, Mai's name flashing across the name.

He gives Zuko a look as he answers it.

"Sokka." Her dry voice sounds dangerously unstable.

"Yeah?"

"Put Zuko on the phone now."

He holds the phone out the Zuko. "Mai wants to talk to you."

"Then she'll call me on my own phone."

"And you won't pick up. Come on, man. Just take the stupid thing."

Within seconds Zuko is hanging up, his skin paling. "I'm going home. Here's your phone."

.

Mai tells him afterwards that Zuko's sister had a break down, and Sokka doesn't figure he'll be meeting him up for coffee any time soon.

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_spring_

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"Are you ever going to talk to me?" She asks him sharply one day before classes, looking paler than she's ever looked before. She looked almost sick beneath the bright lights.

Sokka doesn't look at her. "Does he hit you?"

He feels odd asking her this, almost ashamed. He'd never ask a thing like that before in his life.

Toph's silent for a moment, look at him intently. "What do you care, Sokka? If I was, why should I tell you, anyways?" Her words were like bullets.

She stands with her shoulders thrown back, chin up and spine straight. She looks defiant and stubborn, and he stops thinking of Yue for a moment.

"Because I care."

She snorts. "No. You don't." She makes a choked noise that sounds almost like a sob, almost like a laugh. "You wouldn't speak to me for weeks. Look, I am _sorry_ that Yue died. I don't know what I have done to make you act like I don't exist, or something. But don't go acting concerned about me when you don't even know me." Toph's expression is frosted, and Sokka has never seen her so cold.

There are a thousand things he wants to say.

She whirls around, fleeing the building and slamming the library door behind her back. Everyone looks startled, heads snapping from thick textbooks and the silent glow of laptops.

It sound deafening when it slams shut, and all he can hear is the thunderous echo it leaves behind.

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It's nearly the end of May when she talks to him. It takes almost a month to find her, her smoke like form vanishing. She no longer haunts the library and she drifts through quiet hallways from her dorm room to her classes, locking the door behind her each time.

He waits though, for a simple reason.

He doesn't know her, but he wants to.

He waits, because he doesn't know what else he is capable of doing, other than this. Waiting for her doors to open.

(he should have done this from the beginning, it seems.)

.

"You're in my way, Snoozels." She informs him harshly, her bruised eyes meeting his.

He plants his feet. "Do you want to hang out?"

"No."

"I read the Bell Jar."

"Everyone has read the Bell Jar." She pauses, drawing her shoulders back. "And if they haven't, they should."

There's something fragile in her eyes, and he doesn't know what to say now. He steps to the side and lets her by, her key finding the lock and twisting painfully.

She keeps her back to him but holds the door open. "Are you coming in?"

.

"I'm not going home for the summer," Sokka tells her awkwardly, looking at the room. It's changed in a way, and in a way it hasn't changed. Her bed covers are crumpled in a heap, and her roommates bed is neatly done up and empty. Her books are everywhere, worn out and exhausted, stacked up on shelves and her desk.

Several rocks sit neat on her window ledge, all rough and oddly shaped.

"I figured you'd do the summer program as well." She says, equally awkward. She gathers up a handful of books and places them beside her, her delicate fingers trailing each page. "No sense going home when you don't want to go home, or aren't wanted home."

He feels the need to say something, but he doesn't know what to say.

Her voice emerges suddenly, words delicate. "What did you think of it?"

"Think of what?"

"The Bell Jar."

He pauses, remembering the long nights he spent with a reading light clipped onto the pages, reading each word after another. Imagining her brittle copy sitting up on her bookshelf nestled amongst more books.

"It was depressing."

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She knocks on his door at one in the morning.

She looks furious, fists shaking and an angry flush across her face. Her eyes looking like burning embers, filled with such emotion.

"Toph?" He asks with his voice thick from sleep. He doesn't know really what to say to her now, standing before her in his pajamas. There's a hazy thought that fills him, making him wonder if this is all a dream.

"I broke up with Zhao." She flings her words at him hard, and all he can feel is the slow burn of her rage between them. "I broke up with that bastard."

.

(she did a little more than that.)

(he was in the hospital for six weeks.)

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The summer thaws everything out.

Sokka stops thinking about November funerals. He stops thinking about Toph being hurt and broken, Zhao's shadow looming across her bleeding form. He doesn't imagine the wreck of the little blue convertible.

He lets go of the past.

Instead, he throws himself into the present, discarding the future and leaving it to rot with the past.

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_summer_

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Her kisses are like falling, and he just lets go of everything and falls down with her.

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_Sokka shut the door loudly behind him, feeling all sorts of giddiness and sheer enthusiasm. Aang's sitting cross legged on his bed, various sketches in various stages scattered around him. "Did you find her yet?" he mumbled around a mouthful of pens and pencils. _

"_Yeah." _

"_Was it worth it?"_

"_Yeah."_


End file.
